Tag Archives: platform

Is Sarah Silverman comedy’s new climate champion?

by chaunceystoate2 Posted on October 12, 2018

Finding humor in climate change isn’t easy (trust us!). That’s especially true this week, when U.N. scientists handed the world a big, scary report saying we’re on the road to catastrophe and Hurricane Michael carved a path of devastation through the Florida Panhandle. But Sarah Silverman is up for the challenge. The comedian delivered a nine-minute plea for climate action on Thursday in the latest episode of her Hulu show I Love You, America.

“I know climate change is not the most exciting issue, and the media knows it too, which is part of why it’s covered so infrequently,” Silverman said. She pointed to MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes’ controversial tweet in which he said climate change is a “palpable ratings killer” for news shows and so “the incentives are not great.”

“You know what’s a great incentive?” Silverman asked. “We’re all gonna f*#&’ing die.”

“I feel compelled to use my platform to speak out,” Silverman said. “Granted, my platform is on the third largest streaming network of three, so it’s not so much shouting from the rooftops as like complaining from an open mic at Panera Bread.”

Silverman covered a ton of ground in the segment, from scientists’ terrifying climate predictions to the “it’s a hoax” views of President Trump, who she calls a “Fox News grandpa.” Here’s a clip of her explaining how “absurdly rich and powerful people” are ruining the planet for the rest of us (the full thing is on Hulu):

“The only option is that we react to this massive state of emergency with massive action,” Silverman said. She brought up climate change on her show last month, too, explaining the Trump administration’s rollback of methane regulations.

Silverman isn’t the only comedian taking on climate change: Jimmy Kimmel and Trevor Noah also came up with jokes about the scary U.N. report … somehow.

So are comedians good messengers for climate change? Perhaps! A study from earlier this year found that humor, rather than fear or straightforward facts, got young people the most excited about taking action on climate change.

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Is Sarah Silverman comedy’s new climate champion?

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A climate denial video has 6 million views. Facebook doesn’t care.

by dconstantine1971 Posted on July 31, 2018

A two-minute video attacking the scientific consensus on climate change — made by infamous denier Marc Morano — is going viral. While the Guardian has already thoroughly debunked the content of the video, it’s still making the rounds on social media. On Tuesday, it had racked up over 100,000 shares and 6.3 million views on Facebook.

Even though the social media site has bragged about hiring third-party fact-checkers in many countries to cope with its fake-news problem, its approach to fake science remains obscure. “I don’t know if they are even fact-checking science,” says Gordon Pennycook, a professor at Canada’s University of Regina who studies fake news and political bias.

John Cook, who focuses on climate misinformation as a professor of cognitive science at George Mason University, says he hasn’t heard of the social media giant flagging any climate denial content. “Facebook’s fact-checking algorithms are a bit of a black box,” he tells Grist via email. (The social media site did not respond to a request for comment.)

Instead, Facebook seems to be taking aim at lower-hanging fruit, by limiting the spread of sensational stories from websites known to peddle in falsehoods like Infowars and YourNewsWire. “There’s a wide world of B.S., unfortunately,” Pennycook says.

But while fact-checkers focus on falsehoods akin to “Pizzagate,” fake science stories — which have the potential to influence public policy, health, and the future of the earth — can spread widely. Anti-vaccine groups run rampant on Facebook, with hundreds of thousands of followers exposed to misinformation about health risks of immunization. And the Flat Earth Society (don’t get me started), has more than 150,000 followers, although some of them (hopefully) follow the page as a joke.

Facebook can point to one example of it fact-checking science: Earlier this year, the social-media platform blogged that it had stopped the spread of a viral story about ending strokes by pricking a finger with a needle. But it’s hard to square this tiny victory with the other science misinformation circulating every day on the platform.

In 2016, an investigation by DeSmog found that the most-shared climate article throughout the year was a hoax piece that — like Morano’s video — critiqued the 97-percent scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. This is bad news, especially considering that psychologists have found that attacking consensus is one of the best ways to sow doubt.

Worse, some of Facebook’s third-party fact-checkers are known climate deniers themselves. The Weekly Standard, which was announced as a fact-checking partner in December, has called climate science “Dadaist science” and has critiqued climate action. The fossil fuel-funded Heritage Foundation has espoused climate change denial for decades — and is now partnered with Facebook to investigate possible “liberal bias” in its operations. As Joe Romm writes for ThinkProgress: “This is indeed the fox guarding the henhouse.”

But even if Facebook initiated substantial science fact-checking, it might not be able to stem the flow of denial. Researchers last year found that being “debunked” simply caused many conspiracy theorists to double down on their claims. And since these misinformers inhabit online echo chambers, they rarely see pieces getting debunked anyway.

Still, Cook thinks that Facebook should work on fact-checking science content on its platform. “They can’t just say they’re engineers and they’re absolved of responsibility,” he tells Grist. But he also has another, novel idea for preventing the spread of misinformation: a technique called “inoculation.”

While we might not be able to change the minds of current deniers, Cook explains, we can prevent others from being taken in by their claims. By giving individuals a sample of misinformation — and then explaining the psychology behind it — he believes communicators can “neutralize misinformation” before it starts to spread. “If you explain the techniques used to mislead people, they’re no longer influenced by them,” he says.

It’s ironic that the idea of inoculation, which anti-vaxxers have disparaged for years, could serve as a way to fight the very misinformation that they spread. But any large-scale effort to guard against climate denial or other false science will take a long time, and a lot of education. Like it or not, we need climate action now — and Facebook is still part of the problem.

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A climate denial video has 6 million views. Facebook doesn’t care.

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Meet the young refugee behind Zero Hour’s climate platform

by AngelesWhitesid Posted on July 21, 2018

Standing on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on a rainy Saturday morning, 20-year-old Kibiriti Majuto tells me there’s something he doesn’t understand. He gestures to the U.S. Capitol building looming tall in the distance, and asks: If the vast majority of scientists believe in climate change, then why is the government not taking action?

Behind him, a crowd of young people wear shirts with slogans like “Choose a cooler world” and hold up hand-drawn signs that read “Youth for climate action now.” Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, an indigenous hip-hop artist, raps in the background, “Fight for the cause, die for the dream.”

When the group begins to march, Majuto’s near the front. Megaphone in hand, rain pouring down, he leads a chant, shouting, “What time is it?” The crowd, headed toward the Capitol, yells back, “Zero Hour!”

This is the Zero Hour climate march, a movement led by POC youth.

Majuto is the main author of the Zero Hour platform, the core set of the marchers’ demands. Hundreds of people — many of them young — braved the weather to attend the national march, while others gathered for sister marches all around the country. These Gen-Zers want action on climate change, and they want it now.

Founded by 16-year-old Jamie Margolin last summer, Zero Hour has been picking up steam, sorting out march logistics, and getting big-name environmental partners on board– all while trying to get their schoolwork done.

On the eve of the march, I spoke with Majuto about his experiences as a youth climate organizer. He’s part of Earth Guardians, an international group of young climate activists who Margolin reached out to for help. Six months ago, he stepped up.

Majuto is a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His family fled to escape conflict, first for South Africa. He eventually found himself in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he attends Piedmont Virginia Community College.

He came to the U.S. in 2012, flying over the Statue of Liberty into JFK airport. In some ways, America was as he imagined. What he didn’t expect to see was so much poverty. He recalls a trip to Baltimore, about a year after he moved to the U.S., where he was shocked to see a lot of poor people, many of them black. This didn’t fit with his utopian image of America. “What went wrong?” he thought to himself.

To answer that question, Majuto read up on American history. His takeaway: The U.S. tends to address the needs of middle-class families, not people in poverty. That’s an issue he’s trying to address in the Zero Hour platform. He asks, “Who’s the most impacted? How do we start at the bottom and go up?”

The platform demands include the sort of things you’d expect: slashing greenhouse gas emissions, investing in mass transit, transitioning from fossil fuels, and fining polluters. But, per the bottom-up framework, Zero Hour goes much further.

For instance, just having a good mass transit system isn’t enough: The group says it needs to be accessible for people with disabilities. The transition away from fossil fuels needs to incorporate racial justice and workers rights. As for those pollution fines? They say some of the cash should go toward helping communities adapt to a warming world.

To talk about climate change, they believe, you need to address systems of oppression too.

“We experience climate change differently based on our class, race, and gender,” Majuto tells me. “Those that are well-off have a tendency to live where they can breathe fresh air and don’t have to worry about a pipeline and fossil fuel infrastructure being built in their communities.”

While adults might laud these efforts, the young people doing the work are actually kinda pissed. Adults have dropped the ball on climate change, Majuto says: “It’s not my job, or other young people’s in Zero Hour, to tell politicians who are literally civil servants it’s their job to be doing all this work.”

But they’re organizing and marching anyway, because they feel like there’s no other choice. Majuto says that he and his peers are simply trying to ensure that they can grow up and live as human beings.

“If we keep destroying our planet,” he explains, “we might not even have a future.”

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Meet the young refugee behind Zero Hour’s climate platform

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James Cameron has a new movie where everyone drowns at the end

by MaryjoStrempel Posted on July 27, 2016

It Is A Mathematical Certainty

James Cameron has a new movie where everyone drowns at the end

By on Jul 27, 2016Share

Academy Award–winning filmmaker James Cameron will premiere a short film, Not Reality TV, Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. And while Leonardo DiCaprio is noticeably absent from this Cameron film, disaster is certainly not: The subject of the short — which features scenes from the upcoming season of Years of Living Dangerously — is climate change.

“We made this film to show the reality of climate change — how it’s directly affecting millions of people each day,” Cameron said in a press release. “America just experienced its hottest year ever, rapidly rising sea levels are threatening coastal communities and causing migrations across the globe, and extreme weather events like wildfires and hurricanes continue to spiral out of control as temperatures rise. As I’ve said before, to save our planet we need to mobilize like we did during World War II — the threat to our country and children is that severe.”

A World War II-like mobilization to deal with the effects of climate change is, for the first time in history, written into the Democratic Party’s platform. The platform pledges that in the first 100 days of the Clinton administration, the president will hold a summit of engineers, climate scientists, policy experts, activists, and indigenous communities to devise a plan to solve the climate change crisis.

Not feeling the DNC? You can watch the film — narrated by Sigourney Weaver and featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jack Black, Don Cheadle, and America Ferrera — above.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

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James Cameron has a new movie where everyone drowns at the end

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11 Things the Republican Party Just Promised to Do to the Environment

by CoyRoyer369530 Posted on July 19, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
In 1952, a massive fire—fueled by oil and industrial waste—engulfed Ohio’s Cuyahoga River. Was that the inspiration for the platform Republicans just adopted in Cleveland? AP file photo

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Republican Party’s 2016 platform, released on Monday at its national convention in Cleveland, has sections called “A New Era in Energy” and “Environmental Progress.” Both titles are inaccurate. Perhaps they’re meant sarcastically?

If you want a guide to what Republicans would do with full control of the federal government, you couldn’t get a better one than this 2,400-word part of the platform. Like the EPA/Department of Interior spending bill House Republicans passed last week, it makes the GOP’s incredibly radical agenda crystal clear: deregulate pollution, halt any action to prevent climate change, and expand fossil fuel use.

Here are the 11 biggest lowlights:

Cancel the Clean Power Plan. This plan—the EPA’s program to reduce carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants—is the most important piece of President Barack Obama’s climate agenda. The GOP platform dismisses it as part of “the President’s war on coal”: “The Democratic Party does not understand that coal is an abundant, clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy resource. Those who mine it and their families should be protected from the Democratic Party’s radical anti-coal agenda.” As Grist’s Rebecca Leber noted, this language comes almost verbatim from a pro-coal lobbying group. To call coal “clean” is just a falsehood. In addition to its massive carbon footprint, the burning of coal leads tons of conventional pollution such as smog, soot, and acid rain.

Build the Keystone XL pipeline and more like it. “We intend to finish that pipeline and others as part of our commitment to North American energy security.” Republicans have long been fixated on how awesome Keystone would be, even though current gasoline prices might make it not worth building. If gas prices spike, though, Keystone approval could have major consequences for the climate as it would help bring more super-dirty tar-sands oil to market. This plank is basically the opposite of the Democratic platform’s call for the next administration to use a “Keystone test” and reject infrastructure projects that will exacerbate climate change.

Kill federal fracking regulations. Because nothing should stand in the way of fossil fuel development.

“Oppose any carbon tax.” Many conservative policy wonks support a carbon tax as the most market-friendly, efficient way to reduce carbon emissions. The Republican Party, though, is determined to quash anyone’s hopes of a bipartisan compromise on climate action.

Expedite export terminals for liquefied natural gas. To liquefy gas, ship it across the ocean, and re-gasify it uses a lot of energy and results in a huge carbon footprint. Republicans want more of this.

Abolish the EPA as we know it. The platform calls for turning the EPA into “an independent bipartisan commission” and shifting responsibility for environmental regulation to the states. This would remove the federal government’s ability to study the effects of pollution and establish safe standards. In a particularly Orwellian touch, the Republicans promise that a kneecapped EPA would adhere to “structural safeguards against politicized science.” That actually means safeguards against scientific findings they don’t like. In other words, they would politicize the science.

Stop environmental regulatory agencies from settling lawsuits out of court. Huh? Republicans have been pushing this for a while. Here’s what it’s about: When an agency doesn’t do its job of enforcing a law like the Clean Air Act—often the case, especially under Republican administrations—environmental groups sue to force it to. If the agency thinks it will lose, it may then reach a settlement and agree to do its job going forward. That’s what the platform aims to prevent. Fighting in court until every last appeal is dead can make cases drag on for years, and Republicans want to get away with not regulating polluters for as long as possible.

“Forbid the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide.” This one pretty much speaks for itself. It would wipe out the agency’s ability to reduce emissions and slow climate change.

Turn federal lands over to states. “Congress should give authority to state regulators to manage energy resources on federally controlled public lands within their respective borders,” the platform declares. The federal government controls huge swaths of land in the West and already leases much of it for oil, gas, and coal extraction. The platform is quite open about the fact that Republicans think states will extract more rapaciously. That’s precisely the point. And ultimately they want the land entirely under state control: “Congress shall immediately pass universal legislation providing for a timely and orderly mechanism requiring the federal government to convey certain federally controlled public lands to states.” It’s unclear which lands they are talking about, but it’s a safe bet that they mean those that could generate the most money through their despoiling.

Revoke the ability of the president to designate national monuments. The platform calls for amending the Antiquities Act of 1906 to require congressional approval for new national monuments, and it also calls for state approval of new monuments or national parks. So there would be no more Democratic presidents protecting a sensitive, beautiful, or historically significant area from development if Republicans control Congress or the state where it is located.

Halt funding for the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change. The UNFCCC is the treaty system through which the world’s 195 nations work together to avoid catastrophic climate change. To defund it would undermine the Paris Agreement that was struck last December and throw a huge wrench into global climate progress. That’s the point. The platform explicitly states, “We reject the agendas of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.”

There’s also some random small-bore stuff, like opposition to listing the gray wolf or the lesser prairie chicken as endangered species. There are a ton of right-wing talking points, like declaring the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “a political mechanism, not an unbiased scientific institution.” And there are additional paeans to the virtues of increased fossil fuel extraction.

In one particularly impressive rhetorical backflip, after the platform calls for virtually eliminating all environmental protections, it then says, “The environment is too important to be left to radical environmentalists.” But most Americans support regulations for clean air, clean water, and reducing climate pollution. The real radicals are the anti-government extremists who would reverse 45 years of environmental progress.

This is a document aimed squarely at appeasing the party’s base. If nothing else, you have to credit the Republicans for their audacity. No wonder most of the GOP members of Congress who accept climate science are skipping the convention this year.

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Sanders’ final win: Climate action in the Democratic platform

by JosetteShockley Posted on July 11, 2016

Sanders’ final win: Climate action in the Democratic platform

By on Jul 11, 2016 10:01 amShare

Pushed left by backers of Senator Bernie Sanders, Democratic leaders adopted a draft platform over the weekend that commits the party to a more aggressive stance on climate change — more aggressive, in some areas, than the positions of the party’s presumptive nominee.

Appointees of Sanders and Hillary Clinton met in Orlando to hammer out the party’s policy goals in advance of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia later this month, where the platform will be formally adopted by delegates.

The negotiating sessions went past midnight and were described by committee members as the most contentious in decades, due to Sanders’ stronger-than-expected showing in the primaries, which resulted in the party giving him unusual influence over the platform. The draft language agreed to Sunday morning includes an endorsement to support “every tool available to reduce emissions now,” which most significantly includes an endorsement for pricing carbon. “Democrats believe that carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases should be priced to reflect their negative externalities, and to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy and help meet our climate goals,” the draft reads.

A carbon tax was part of Sanders’ big push on climate policy during the primary race, while Clinton has resisted calling for anything that can be misconstrued as a tax hike in an election year.

Putting a price  on carbon isn’t controversial policy if you’re talking to an economist. But Clinton’s campaign has justified keeping its distance by saying climate change “is too important to wait for climate deniers in Congress to pass comprehensive climate legislation,” i.e., a carbon tax.

Clinton will be sticking to that reasoning regardless of what the party platform says. “Her plan is clearly articulated on her website,” Clinton Energy Policy Adviser Trevor Houser said this weekend, according to the Associated Press. “It’s not her plan.” The campaign did not return a request for comment.

That indicates the limited reach of the party platform. Although it’s designed to articulate the positions of the party as a whole, individual politicians — even the party’s standard-bearer — aren’t bound to it. But Sanders has indicated that one of his main goals is to push the party as a whole toward more dramatic action on issues like climate change, and the platform provides the best articulation yet of that direction.

The draft platform hammered out over the weekend includes a few other small nods to Sanders’ climate positions. It marks the official death among Democrats of the once-popular talking point that natural gas can be “a bridge fuel” to renewables. The platform now pits clean energy against gas, by incentivizing wind, solar, and renewables over new natural gas-fired power plants.

The draft also reflects a change in the left’s thinking after President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline last year, stating that Democrats should “ensure federal actions don’t ‘significantly exacerbate’ global warming” before supporting new infrastructure projects.

Progressive Democrats hardly got everything they wanted, particularly on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which Obama strongly supports over the objections of many environmentalists, and a nationwide ban on fracking. The platform committee settled on Clinton’s proposal to regulate fracking’s methane emissions and impact on water quality, instead of calling for the Sanders-preferred nationwide ban.

Despite some mixed outcomes, Sanders feels he has won enough in the party’s platform to finally take himself out of the running for the Oval. He’s expected to endorse Clinton on Tuesday.

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Sanders may not win but he’s about to do something yuge

by CooperMerewethe Posted on June 1, 2016

Yuge!

Sanders may not win but he’s about to do something yuge

By on Jun 1, 2016 2:20 pmShare

Despite the long odds of taking the Democratic nomination this July, Bernie Sanders is fighting on — raising money and giving speeches, even though, barring an astroid, Hillary Clinton will be running against Donald Trump.

And yet, when Sanders sat down with Rolling Stone after a rally in Oregon recently, he acknowledged that his greatest contribution to the race won’t be his victory; it will be pulling the Democratic Party to the left. The candidate told reporter Tim Dickinson that one of his priorities is to see strong language on climate change and a carbon tax in the Democratic platform:

Number one, we want the strongest progressive platform that we can [get]. That would incorporate many of the ideas that we’ve fought for: from Medicare for all; paid family and medical leave; 15-bucks-an-hour minimum wage; very strong language on climate change and a carbon tax; stopping fracking; public colleges and universities tuition-free, et cetera, et cetera.

Now that Sanders has been allotted five out of 15 slots on the Democratic Party’s Platform Drafting Committee, he’s in a better position to make that happen. Sanders announced Monday that his five candidates include academic and political activist Cornel West, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, Arab American Institute head James Zogby, Native American activist Deborah Parker, and climate activist Bill McKibben (a Grist board member). Hillary Clinton has named former Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner as one of her picks.

Sanders may not be able to claim victory in the race, but he’ll be able to claim something momentous all the same: bringing in new and needed voices to the very inner workings of the party he hoped to lead.

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A Manhattan-sized oil spill just hit the Gulf of Mexico

by AdeleSprouse Posted on May 13, 2016

A Manhattan-sized oil spill just hit the Gulf of Mexico

By on May 13, 2016 4:22 pmShare

Royal Dutch Shell spilled an estimated 2,100 barrels of oil off Louisiana’s coast in the Gulf of Mexico this week, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement confirmed on Thursday. Though officials don’t know what caused the spill just yet, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it’s now contained.

That contained spill has left a sheen of oil the size of Manhattan in the Gulf.

For now, drilling activities at Shell’s Brutus platform have been suspended. The platform, which sits tethered to the sea floor atop 2,900 feet of water, has a maximum capacity of 100,000 barrels of oil per day.

BSEE

Still, this spill is tiny in comparison to BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which released a 4-million-barrel gusher of oil into the Gulf. But Shell’s and BP’s spills aren’t the only ones to hit these waters — according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the area has seen six other large disasters in last few decades.

Despite the known risks of offshore drilling, the Gulf’s oil activities are ramping up. Oil and gas production in the Gulf is expected to hit new highs in 2016 and 2017, despite low crude oil and gas prices. Every time companies punch another drill-sized hole in the sea floor, they risk more harm.

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Texas Republicans Inch Closer to Secession

by ErnestBlair1181 Posted on May 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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If the nationalists get their way, this November might be the last time Texans vote for a US president.

On Wednesday, the Platform Committee of the Texas Republican Party voted to put a Texas independence resolution up for a vote at this week’s GOP convention, according to a press release from the pro-secession Texas Nationalist Movement. The resolution calls for allowing voters to decide whether the Lone Star State should become an independent nation.

Texas was, in fact, its own country for nine years before joining the United States in 1845, and while the idea of returning to independence has never been taken seriously by most people, it remains popular as a romantic notion and marketing hook. Lone Star beer is the “national beer of Texas.” Texas Monthly is the “national magazine of Texas.” In a 2009 rally, then-Governor Rick Perry hinted that the state could secede if “Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people.” He later backed off of the idea. (Representatives of the state GOP and Texas Nationalist Movement could not be reached for comment.)

The Texas Nationalist Movement, once considered a quixotic fringe group, has added hundreds of members in the years since the election of Barack Obama. According to the Houston Chronicle‘s Dylan Baddour, at least 10 county GOP chapters are coming to the convention supporting independence resolutions. But this will be the first time in the state’s 171-year history that they will actually vote on one. It’s very unlikely to win. Then again, that’s what people said about Donald Trump.

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Texas Republicans Inch Closer to Secession

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California Democrats are raising the bar on climate action

by JosefGolden Posted on March 1, 2016

California Democrats are raising the bar on climate action

By on 29 Feb 2016commentsShare

In a presidential election season that has already managed to run the gamut from mildly infuriating to unequivocally bonkers, it’s easy to forget that run-of-the-mill state politics both a) exists and b) matters. California Democrats proved both of those points on Sunday with the adoption of a reinvigorated platform, bundled into which is an aggressive energy and environment plan. It’s a case study in an aggressive environmental agenda filing its already sharp teeth.

While a previous energy and environment plank called for “reduced reliance on dirty forms of energy such as coal,” the new platform calls for its total end. Language in the new plan opposes all investment in “new fossil fuel infrastructure projects” — the blanket nature of which covers everything from coal export terminals to natural gas plants. It also calls for the expansion of decentralized energy generation (think plenty of rooftop solar panels), especially in disadvantaged communities.

“Our platform is very forward-thinking,” said Eric C. Bauman, vice chair of the California Democratic Party. “It reflects the best values of Democrats and progressives, and it sets a standard against which candidates, elected officials, and activists all across the country look to measure themselves.”

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California’s government is blue across the board. With a Democratic governor, Democrats in control of both state houses, and no real prospect of electoral upsets, the state party’s platform promises to appeal to voters who are ready to usher in real action to fight climate change.

Last September, the California state legislature’s passage of Senate Bill 350 offered a mixed bag for environmentalists. While the law requires utilities to generate 50 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030, it fails to rein in the state’s heavy gasoline consumption, thanks to pressure from the oil lobby. The new energy and environment platform revives the goal of cutting fuel use in half by 2030 and pushes the state to generate a whopping 100 percent of its electricity from “renewable and sustainable energy sources” by the same year. This is a platform that “gives hope to people that their political party and its elected officials, candidates, activists, and leaders will actually consider what makes life better for everybody,” said Bauman.

California often shines as a beacon of climate action in the United States, and the release of the Democrats’ environmental plan just turned up the wattage. As the state faces the 2018 election of a new governor to replace climate champion Jerry Brown, it will be enshrined values like these that will ensure the expansion of his already substantial environmental legacy.

In the wake of a Supreme Court stay on the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, local initiatives like these take on even greater importance. The Paris Agreement — discussions around which were broadly led by the United States — requires buy-in from all its signatories if it’s to succeed. In other encouraging news, Maryland’s state Senate passed a bill last week on a 38-to-8 vote to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent by 2030, compared to 2006 levels. That, too, is the kind of state effort that lends itself to the kind of international credibility the United States needs to maintain as the U.N. agreement enters its implementation phase.

Raising the bar at the state level is always good news on the climate front, especially when federal action gets stuck in gridlock. Bauman argues that California Democrats can do so because they don’t have to use “the same kind of coded language” that he suggests crops up in national platforms. “We don’t have to do that. We get to give voice to the issues we believe in and we get to do it in an authentic way.” Here’s to hoping, as usual, that other states can follow California’s lead.

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California Democrats are raising the bar on climate action

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